


Turning Over A New Leaf

by HalfASlug



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6426037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfASlug/pseuds/HalfASlug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Visiting Sandbrook always ends in Ellie learning more about Hardy. After his slip of the tongue in front of Tess, she can't help but wonder if she's uncovered something she didn't want to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Over A New Leaf

Ellie has never been more grateful for it being illegal to drive and be on the phone at the same time. Talking to her sister at the minute - or at any other point in her life - is something she tries to avoid. With Lucy the chances are a quick chat ends in her being out of patience or pocket.

Hardy looks like he's going to start a petition to have the law abolished as soon as he hangs up.

"She's driving at the minute. No, she doesn't. About an hour. What? I _am_ talking. What else is there to say? I'm answering your questions."

Saying that, Hardy has that expression every time he's forced to talk to other adults.

"I don't- She doesn't _see_ anything in me. What are you talking about?"

Knowing exactly what Lucy is talking about, Ellie snatches the phone off him and holds it to her ear. "We'll be there in an hour or so. See you then."

Hoping she isn't blushing and has acted fast enough to stop Lucy making her stupid "harder, Hardy" joke, she chucks the phone somewhere near the gear stick.

"She says Tom's behaved himself."

"About bloody time."

She waits for the grumbling about being made to answer the phone start but it never does. Despite having a chunk of metal added to him, he's lighter than she's ever seen him. Today alone he has almost smiled twice. While he hasn't quite reached the point of warmly greeting strangers and interacting with passing dogs, this new Alec Hardy is a damn sight happier than the old one. Obviously she isn't expecting him to spontaneously sing Disney songs to birds, but the odd thank you would be nice.

That, of course, was before meeting Tess. Since they'd left her in Sandbrook with Hardy nursing his bruised pride, he's been understandably subdued. In an effort to avoid him slipping back to being a borderline hermit and professional scowler, Ellie goes for her fail-safe method of getting him to talk - teasing him.

"It's a good job I took the phone off you when I did."

"Why? Scared I'd bribe her into giving Fred that Sunny-D shite?"

Any qualms she has about her next comment evaporate on the spot. "Nah, just worried you'd call her love."

"Hilarious," he snaps. "You're wasted as a copper."

Normally the more he sulks over her barbs, the more she smiles, but there's something different about his reaction this time. Rather than pointedly ignoring her, he's sinking into his chair and looking out of the window as if surviving heart surgery was an indicator that he could live through throwing himself onto the M5.

"Oh my God," she gasps, eyes flicking from the road to him. "You're not still in love with her, are you?"

"No."

In his voice she can hear every painful minute it took for his answer to become the truth.

"Right. Good," she says because she can't think of anything else.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him turn and face her. A glance in his direction shows he's got that face on where he's genuinely baffled that someone has taken an interest in his well-being.

"Why? Why is that good?" he splutters.

She doesn't say how her first thought is how Tess has that aura of a woman who smirks when she should smile and struts around naked after sex in search of her silk bathrobe and likes her men wrapped around her little finger tighter than the smart tops she uses to get them that way. Her grip tightens on the steering wheel. Since when did she get so protective of Hardy?

"What she said earlier. It wasn't on."

The muscle in his jaw twitches in what she supposes is agreement. While laughing at his slip up wasn't too bad, the knock at his job was downright cruel. The memory of him almost dying in her arms in the boat yard was still far too vivid for her to forgive her for that.

As well as that, there's how she simply doesn't trust Tess. She's always been pleasant enough to Ellie, but niggling in the back of her mind is the knowledge that this woman had an affair. While she can hardly judge another person's marriage, cheating is something Ellie is proud to say she has never done and has never understood. And, while Hardy has his faults and is routinely awful company, he's loyal to a fault and she knows he'd never do something like that.

"So it's good because she was mean to me?" Hardy summarises.

"Is that not enough reason?"

"You're mean to me!"

Ellie briefly considers unfastening his seat belt and performing an emergency stop. "Then don't fall in love with me!"

"Fine!"

"And, for the record, I put up with enough of your shit to call you a bastard once in a while," she adds when the deeply ingrained need to cover awkwardness forces her to. Somehow seeing his reaction to him being called a bastard is easier than even thinking about his reaction to the other thing.

Seemingly done with talking, Hardy folds his arms and goes back to watching Somerset pass them by as Radio 2 does its best to fill the silence. The only time Hardy moves is when a song that particularly grates on him is playing through the speakers and he glares at the radio as if he can make the DJ realise their grave error. Admittedly she enjoys watching him squirm. After one argument too many a few journeys back, she'd made him settle on one station he could tolerate to stop his incessant dial twiddling. She had considered the other option of letting him bring a CD from home. In the end, the possibility of him showing up with a stack of Leonard Cohen albums was enough for her to never voice this suggestion.

"You know, I really can't picture you married," Ellie thinks out loud when an upbeat indie song looks close to undoing all the progress the surgeons made on Hardy's health. "Okay, married maybe. But not... getting there."

He's staring at her like she's announced he died on the operating table and this is his subconscious' idea of an afterlife.

"I mean, you can barely hold a conversation together long enough to buy a pint of milk. How did you ever woo someone?" she grins while he looks gradually more cornered.

"I was young once," he says. There's a hint of a smile there, underneath his horror, that takes her aback. Pre-pacemaker Hardy would never have ventured so close to making a joke like this.

Seeing as he's in a strangely good mood, she decides to try her luck. "Go on, then," she pushes, "how did you propose? Wait - let me guess - text?"

He rolls his eyes. "Let it go, Miller. Anyway, it was nearly twenty years ago."

"So email?"

For a minute she thinks her glimpse into the mystery that still is Alec Hardy is over. He's shifted to face away from her once more and a chat show host is informing them of the weekend's telly highlights. It still infuriates her how he knows her whole life, while so much of his is still hidden. It's not fair, really. It's not like he pried into her personal life. In fact, her personal life forced its way quite rudely into the tiny bubble of things he cares about.

Still. Their friendship (it took a while but she thinks that's what this is) will be unequal until she's seen the scar tissue he conceals under unironed shirts.

"It was a plant."

He's waited so long to reply that Ellie almost forgets what he's referring to. Even when she remembers, it's hardly clear.

"Eh?"

"A plant," he repeats, running a hand over his face. "We'd been talking - not seriously, mind - about the future. Marriage, kids. She was laughing. Said I could barely look after myself, let alone anything else. So I decided to prove her wrong and bought a potted plant."

The only other time Ellie has known him open up like this, he'd told her about the day he nearly drowned trying to save someone who was already beyond his help. How something so precious had been made into something hideous. There was a hint of that in his faraway gaze now, but is was softened by the slight upturn of his mouth.

"What happened to the plant?"

"Within a week, it was dead."

"A week?" Ellie exclaims. "That's impressive. Even if you were trying to kill it, a week would be impressive."

He takes her joke well, thankfully. It could just be the dying light but it looks as though he's managed his third almost-smile of the day.

"I tried to hide it from Tess, but she found out. Laughed at me. Threatened to tell Alan Titchmarsh. I said she was right." His voice was almost indistinguishable from the soft purr of the car engine. "Asked her if she'd look after me. She promised she would."

Ellie takes her eyes off the road for a moment to look at him properly. He's looking dead ahead, all trace of humour gone. If she didn't know his moods as well as she did she wouldn't have spotted the blistering hurt still lurking behind his eyes.

She thinks of how, while her situation is undeniably a pile of shit, at least she doesn't have to make small talk with someone she once thought the world of who doesn't love her anymore. The two aren't really comparable, but she can't imagine being in his shoes. She'd often wondered what it had taken for the man who nearly killed himself solving a case to all but accept barely seeing his own daughter. Now she knows. While he's with Tess, he's his usual self with the odd outburst of bitterness. Afterwards he looks nothing short of defeated. Giving everything you are to someone with the promise they will care for it only for them to betray you and destroy life as you know it... Well, maybe she can empathise with him.

Ellie wonders if, once the anger and the hurt aren't as overwhelming as they are now, she too will become as jaded as the man beside her.

She hopes she doesn't. She hopes she has the strength to keep fighting for what's left of her life, her family, _herself_. Then again, the more she learns about him, the more Ellie realises Alec Hardy is one of the strongest people she's ever met and the future looks even more terrifying.

"Tell me this plant wasn't a daisy?" she asks eventually.

He laughs. It's almost silent, but it's there. His mouth stretched into a smile and his thin chest shaking.

Maybe she can get through this?

"No. No, it was... I don't know." Hardy shakes his head. "Something green."

"That's the saying," Ellie says. "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something green."

"Shut up, Miller."

They pass the _Welcome To Dorset_ sign and, for the first time, they are both smiling as they cross the border.


End file.
